Biography

Danielle Dirks, PhD is a sociologist, professor, and author. She received her MA and BA in sociology, MA certificate and minor in gender and women's studies, and BS in psychology from the University of Florida. She completed her PhD in sociology at The University of Texas at Austin in 2011, with concentrations in criminology and racial and ethnic relations. That fall, she started as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Occidental College, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California.

She is the author of Confronting Campus Rape: Legal Landscapes, New Media, and Networked Activism (Routledge, 2015) and co-author of How Ethical Systems Change: Lynching and Capital Punishment (Routledge, 2011), as well as several other articles, chapters, and pieces on crime, justice, and inequality.

She is currently at work on a third book, Punishment in the Age of Google: The Mark of a Digital Criminal Record, that explores the ways in which digital technologies are reshaping American penal practices.

Her work has been featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, New York Magazine, Huffington Post, Marie Claire, MSNBC, Bloomberg, Gawker, Ms. Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, and a handful of feature-length documentaries, including The Hunting Ground. She has been a guest on Al Jazeera, National Public Radio, TakePart Live, and many other outlets.

In 2010, Dirks was the first social scientist to be awarded the prestigious Donald D. Harrington Fellows Dissertation Award. In 2013, for her dedication to teaching and her students, she won the campus-wide Donald R. Loftsgordon Teaching Award at Occidental College, the first professor in the history of the award to earn the distinction so early in her career.

In her commitment to public sociology, Dr. Dirks frequently speaks and provides workshops to colleges, universities, and organizations across the United States.

Selected Talks

Contributing to a Liberatory Criminology: Engaging in Justice Movements and Public-Scholar Activism, American Society of Criminology

Antifeminist Backlash to the Campus Antiviolence Movement, Stanford University Law School

Confronting Campus Rape: Research and Public Sociology, American Sociological Association

Ending Rape on Campus: An Antiviolence and Civil Rights Struggle, Lehigh University

Violence Among Us: A Dialogue about Sexual Assault on Campus, University of San Francisco

The New Campus Antirape Movement: Networked Survivors Fighting for Reform, University of Alaska - Fairbanks

Survivor Activism in the Fight Against Sexual Assault, University of Southern California